The festival opens on May 12th and runs until the 23rd. Many acclaimed directors are competing, including Pedro Almodóvar and Hirokazu Kore-eda, and there's a long list of well-known faces expected to walk the red carpet.
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CANNES – Twenty-four steps of red carpet form the mountain that every filmmaker dreams of climbing. The "Montée des marches" (staircase ascent) of the Cannes Film Festival is the prestigious staircase leading to the Grand Théâtre Lumière at the Palais, where all competing films and highly anticipated titles are screened. Who will ascend those steps at this year's festival (May 12-23), held against a backdrop of a challenging international situation, amidst an energy crisis that is also impacting the world of cinema?
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In this edition, which features no Italian films in competition and fewer Hollywood productions, which stars will enliven the red carpet of the festival? First, the members of the jury, led by South Korean director Park Chan-wook, who will have to choose the Palme d'Or and other awards. These include Demi Moore, Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao, Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård, and Irish-Ethiopian actress Ruth Negga.
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And who are the actors who will be there to present their films? Scarlett Johansson, who made her directorial debut last year with "Eleanor the Great," returns this year as an actress in the crime thriller "Paper Tiger" by James Gray, alongside Adam Driver and Miles Teller. John Travolta, who has presented many films as an actor in the past (remember the red carpet for "Pulp Fiction" in 2014, twenty years after winning the Palme d'Or, where Travolta danced on the staircase with Uma Thurman and Tarantino), makes his directorial debut at 72 with a "family" film dedicated to his passion for airplanes, "Night Flight to Los Angeles."
"Night Flight to Los Angeles," John Travolta makes his directorial debut with a fairy tale about childhood airplanes.
Léa Seydoux, a French actress beloved by auteur cinema but also a star thanks to her role in the "007" franchise, will be the star of two films: in competition with "Un Certain Regard" with "Je voudrais qu'on m'embrasse," and in the main competition with "More One Day." She will also be present at the screening of "Black and White and Blue."
Also on the beach, which will be renamed "Brigitte Bardot Beach" in honor of the deceased diva, there will be some curiosities, including the return of Ken Loach, the 89-year-old director, who will be at Cannes to present the 1995 Palme d'Or winner, "Land and Freedom," while the French filmmaker Claude Lelouche, just a year older, will be there for the screening of "A Man and a Woman." Special guests will also be present in the "Cannes Classics" section, including Bruce and Laura Dern (father and daughter, Oscar-winning actors for the documentary "Dernsie: The Amazing Life of Bruce Dern"), Guillermo Del Toro (who will present his film "Pan's Labyrinth"), Dario Argento (who will introduce "Metti, una sera a cena" by Patroni Griffi, of which he was a screenwriter), and Gong Li for "Farewell My Concubine." Contributing to the list of stars are the filmmakers who will receive the honorary Palme d'Or, including Peter Jackson, the cult director of the "Lord of the Rings" saga and the Beatles documentary, and the icon Barbra Streisand, who straddles music and cinema.
Of course, the exclusive parties, numbering over fifty, parallel to the festival, will return: from the Chopard Dinner & Love Party to the Eva Longoria Global Gift Gala. The highlights include the 32nd amfAR Gala at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, a major charity event for AIDS research, where Robbie Williams, Pink Pantheress, and Zara Larsson will perform this year, followed by the DiCaprio amfAR Afterparty, organized by the actor, in a large villa in the area. This year, the fourth season of the award-winning series "The White Lotus" will be filmed during the festival, with some of the cast, including Laura Dern (also on the red carpet for the documentary about her father, "Dernsie" by Mike Mendez), Vincent Cassel, Heather Graham, Rosie Perez, and Sandra Bernhard, making appearances on the red carpet.